Read This First

In October of 2010 Erin was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This blog is to record what is going inside Erin's mind. We don't know what all that will entail... But we are hoping that keeping a record of it will help in some manner. We also hope that maybe, just maybe, that we'll heal from whatever issues that we have and come out victorious.

All personalities or identities within Erin are invited to write here; each entry will be marked with who is writing.

If you are a survivor yourself, there are no trigger warnings on the entries... Please be careful as you navigate this blog. If you are a significant other of someone with DID/MPD, our hope is that this blog may be of some use to you, but please remember that every person with DID is very unique and must be considered as their own case.

Thank you for visiting!

Saturday, July 23, 2011

When the world becomes upside down... -- Morrigan

Life as I have known it for the last few months has been changing drastically and dramatically. The basic plot of this part of the story is that we have uncovered long buried memories. By "we" I mean Yomi, Tommi, and myself. Not much has been surprising me other than how strong and important Tommi has become to our internal family (what we were formally calling our "system"). I told myself he was just one more of us, but, when he was finally able to tell his part of the story, I realized just how significant he is to Yomi. To start there would be to get ahead of myself however.

Last you, readers, heard, all of us were having problems with Chaos & Justice and this idea of security clearance on what some people could or could not know. There were so many secrets, most of which were being kept from Yomi. I did not know why, until a break though happened.

Little Erin had left for the Pit and the Tombs and had returned with Erin, the original girl we had been protecting all these years. This freaked out Yomi very, very badly. Yomi wanted nothing to do with Erin, period.

Then, Yomi talked to my good friend, Avye (name changed to protect identity. Prounounced: Ev-eh. She is part of another DID family like Yomi and all of us). They talked about the original girl coming and how Avye had to deal with that off and on for years. Yomi was listening to all sorts of video game music during this, I do not know why, but between talking to Avye and listening to the lyrics of a favorite song, Yomi finally understood a few things.

The song "Melodies of Life" from Final Fantasy 9 has always been a favorite of Yomi's ever since she heard it back in middle school. She never knew why she connected so well with it, but this night she did. "Melodies of Life" is the name of the song.

Anyway, this got Yomi to remembering what we have been calling "the life before". This would be the years when the body was from 0-11 years old. The years Yomi could not rightly remember. A basic plot of what happened is as follows:

When Erin was born, she had a medical condition that required a lot of hospital visits and and lab work. As you can imagine, this terrified a tiny little girl, so she made two imaginary friends to help her: Kitty, who later became Yomi, and Horsie, who later became Morrigan. Kitty taught Erin everything she needed to know about playing or anything in school that Erin did not understand. Kitty was the Teacher. My role as Horsie (oh how I do not like that name) was to protect Erin from the pain and fear that surrounded her. This was often at the hospital, but sometimes it was other places. She was often afraid of the family cat. We would not take over for her, but she saw us outside herself and drew comfort or knowledge from us.

Then the summer Erin was 6 years old, the man at the playground attacked her. She was not supposed to be there, but Erin was often doing things that her parents didn't want her to do when she thought she could get away with it. He told her that no one would believe her if she said something about the attack and that she needed to be at the playground when he came for her. He came several more times, we are not sure how many times before Erin just couldn't take it anymore. This is when Erin split into Little Erin.

The attacks by this man at the playground kept happening. Kitty and I tried to stop it, but we were only "invisible friends" what could we do? We bit, scratched, bucked, stomped, but nothing touched him. Eventually, Little Erin couldn't take it either, and another split happened.

Then the outside family all moved overseas, away from the man, away from the abuse. Kitty and I began teaching this new girl (Marie) how to be like Erin and Little Erin so that no one notices something happened. At some point we started calling her "Marine" because Kitty convinced the girl that going into the Young Marines would make her tough enough to pretend to be Erin. The problem was that Erin was out-going, loud, spontaneous, joyful. Marine was shy, introspective, timid. It hurt her to try to pretend to be Erin; it hurt her slowly and badly. It wore away at her and eventually she could not handle it and she split within herself. This is when Shiloh came and took her inside to protect her. He hid them both deeply. This was when Marine's name changed to "Marie."

This left the body with no one controlling it, which is a dangerous position to be in. Somehow, Kitty was pulled inside and she became the new girl who had to pretend to be Erin. This happened about the same time that the outside family moved back to the United States.

Kitty managed the pretending for a while, but then she decided that she didn't want to remember the man at the playground or anything associated with what happened. So she pulled me, Horsie, inside as well and placed me into an internal world that she created. Then she suppressed all the bad memories, keeping just enough of the good memories to be able to pretend like she was Erin.

In order to keep herself from remembering what happened, she set up a system of security clearances and made Chaos & Justice to maintain it. Whenever she began remembering something, Chaos & Justice would take the memories away from her again. However, Kitty gave herself one way to remember what happened, which was to answer a series of questions to grant herself higher security clearance. The question for the highest security clearance was "Who is the Government?" If or when she finally answered that question, the system she created would fall away and she would begin to remember what really happened. When Yomi was triggered by "Melodies of Life" and she remembered the "life before," she knew who the Government was: Herself. This is when we stopped having issues with Chaos & Justice and the security clearance.

While this system was still in place, Kitty (whose name eventually changed to Yomi)continued to develop the internal world (called "Alter"). Yomi also began to split within herself as she was unable to handle the emotions that comes with living life every day. She made six others to handle her self-hate, joy, love, pain, fear, sexual desire. She made a seventh when she became overwhelmed by schoolwork.

While I was in Alter, the life Yomi gave me was too harsh and so I split also. Jihan and Logan both came from me. Jihan was my Protector (in a very twisted way) and Logan was the one who taught me how beautiful life can be. Logan integrated back into me a while ago, but I can still feel him within me; he is not completely gone.

At the beginning, I said I was surprised how important Tommi is to Yomi, this is why. Tommi originally began as just the one to hold onto Yomi's self-hate and self-anger and the things related to those. The life that Yomi gave him was horrible and tragic. However, the two of them have gotten very close. Tommi has begun learning to support Yomi when she is going through things that she would normally give to someone else. It is very hard to describe their relationship in ways that would not seem sentimental. Neither of them are sentimental toward one another but they are quite fierce about each other. Tommi would do literally anything to protect Yomi's heart and Yomi listens and respects Tommi as one of her best friends. I do not think she realizes how close of friends they truly are. Tommi is slowly becoming another co-main, I believe, time will tell...

2 comments:

Wow. You have quite an amazing amount of knowledge about your alters and inner world. You must be in therapy. I guess I am skeptical. The abuse on the playground was horrible. But it ended and then...was there more abuse? Maybe i need to read more. But to have such an intricate system, most people with your kind of system are survivors of years of ritual abuse and torture. Even into adulthood. Why was Erin put to sleep or put inside? Will she be back? She is the host. She deserves to live her life. I hope if you are seeing a therapist you are working on getting the original Erin back so she can live her life, or learn how to live it.So I will keep reading. I am not judging, nor doubting...just curious.

Since we found out about the playground, we have asked ourselves constantly if that was all. Even to ourselves it seems so small to have caused so many problems. The only thing I personally can think of to cause this is that there were far more attacks at the playground than we realize (as well as some things that happened at school that Ellie has yet to be okay speaking of). We agree with you; things are far mor intricate than they should be, if it was only a few times at the playground. That said, I personally think there's more that we just don't remember yet, or that it affected us much, much more than we realized (this would be a possibility if Original Erin was more sensitive than we think she was).

As to why Original Erin was put inside, again, we're aren't sure. We do know that she currently in the internal world living a life that she may have had if things at the playground never happened. Ellie and Yomi have spoken with her, she is happy and, at this point, we do not wish to disrupt that happiness. Maybe at some point in the future we will bring her back and work with her. However, right now we are trying to work out the issues that we have.

The World of Erin

Quick FAQ

1. The presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states; each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self.

2. At least two of these identities or personality states recurrentlytake control of the person's behavior.

3. Inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.

(Criteria According to the Diagnostic Statistics Manual version IV [DSMIV])

Who is Erin?

The name of the body and the Original Personality. Erin's mind contains all of the identities that split from her and other identities created. We many identities are the ones who made this blog.

What posts should I read first?

"Discovering Multiple Personality Disorder" is probably where you would want to begin. The posts with the word "About" in the title are simply informational posts about individual alters or the rooms inside; these can be read in almost any order. The other posts should probably be read in chronological order.

For quick information, click on the "Within Erin" tab or "Terms to Know" tab. This will give you brief information about each Alter, the rooms, and other terminology that is useful for understanding the blog.

Links

Dissociative Blog Showcase -- An index of blogs regarding dissociation. Not all blogs are specifically about DID, but many are. Nor do all the blogs use trigger warnings, so please take care.

ISST-D-- The International Society of the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. The have information about various dissociative disorders and are a great place to look for accurate information.

Fort Refuge -- This is a website that can be helpful. Its forum contains helpful information for abuse survivors, disorder sufferers, and significant others. Here you can network with other people and make a support system for yourself. There is also a chat available to IM live with other people.

T W Crews -- This is another DID website with a lot of helpful information.

The Manual -- Written by Jeff Vineburg, the significant other of a DID family. This is a good resource for everything related to DID/MPD.

Do No Harm -- A non-profit group who's goal is to inspire people to create a better world by intentionally doing no harm to anyone, and, consequently, intentionally doing good.